10 Rillington Place (1971) - IMDb IMDb 17 January 2017 4:34 PM, UTC NEWS There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error Based on the real-life case of the British serial killer John Christie, and what happened to his neighbours Tim and Beryl Evans. Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC a list of 21 titles created 08 Sep 2011 a list of 35 titles created 03 Oct 2011 a list of 31 titles created 24 Jun 2013 a list of 47 titles created 29 Oct 2015 a list of 23 titles created 10 months ago Title: 10 Rillington Place (1971) 7.6/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin.

Nominated for 1 BAFTA Film Award. See more awards » Photos Rillington Place (TV Mini-Series 2016) Crime A three-part drama about serial killer John Christie and the murders at 10 Rillington Place in the 1940s and early 1950s. Stars: Jodie Comer, Tim Roth, Nico Mirallegro A series of brutal murders in Boston sparks a seemingly endless and increasingly complex manhunt. Director: Richard Fleischer A young blind woman is pursued by a maniac while staying with family in their country manor. Director: Richard Fleischer An idealistic rookie cop joins the LAPD to make ends meet while finishing law school, and is indoctrinated by a seasoned veteran. As time goes on, he loses his ambitions and family as police work becomes his entire life. Director: Richard Fleischer Edit Storyline London, 1949. John Christie is an unassuming, middle-aged man who, along with his wife Ethel, lives in the ground-floor flat at 10 Rillington Place. His demeanor masks the fact of being a serial killer.

His modus operandi is to act as a person with a medical background, lure unsuspecting women to his apartment on the pretense of curing them of some ailment, knock them unconscious with carbon monoxide gas, gain his sexual release through contact with the unconscious body, then strangle the victim dead before disposing of the body somewhere in the house or outside area. His next intended target is Beryl Evans, a young woman who has just moved into the top flat in the house. Beryl's husband, Tim Evans, is an illiterate man who likes to put on airs. Already with an infant daughter named Geraldine, the Evanses learn they are going to have another baby, which they cannot afford to have, nor can they afford to abort the pregnancy. This problem, on top of the constant issue of lack of money ... Written by Huggo The true story of John Christie - the serial killer. See more » Genres: 29 January 1971 (UK) See more » Also Known As: 10 Rillington place See more » Filming Locations: Did You Know? Trivia The movie's closing epilogue states: "Christie confessed his crimes and was hanged at Pentonville Prison.

Twelve years later Timothy John Evans was pardoned, his body exhumed and reburied in consecrated ground". See more » Goofs The caption '1949' appears on the screen as the Evans family come to view the top floor of 10 Rillington Place, but in fact they moved in in 1948. See more » Quotes Timothy John Evans : How do you actually do it? John Reginald Christie : That's something only doctors and myself know about, it has to be secret you understand. See more » Crazy Credits Prologue to opening credits: "This is a true story Whenever possible the dialogue has been based on official documents" See more » Connections Referenced in Nekromantik (1987) See more » Frequently Asked Questions (derby, kansas usa) – See all my reviews This British thriller is one of the best films I have ever seen. It tells the story of John Christie, the serial killer whose "career" lasted from the middle 1940's until the early 1950's. The name is taken from the scene of the murders; 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, London.

Chillingly portrayed by the great actor Richard Attenborough , Christie was a little mouse of a man who first lured his victims home on some pretext or other, usually by saying that he could perform some desired medical procedure on them, for example, an abortion, which was illegal at the time. Once there, he put them at ease by offering them a cup of tea, deceived them into breathing gas from the pipe, rendering them unconscious, then strangled them. He disposed of the bodies, at first by burying them in the garden, then putting them under the sink in the water closet, and finally by tearing up and replacing floorboards and papering over cupboards. The primary reasons that Christie was able to do what he did for so long were first of all the war. London was undergoing the blitz, and people had a tendency to disappear during the bombing. Another reason was that he was able to turn the suspicions of the police from him to a not very bright truck driver named Timothy Evans, (played by John Hurt) who was convicted of the death of his baby daughter, and was also suspected in the murder of his wife, but due to English law could only be tried for one or the other of them.

He was hanged in 1950. The scene in the film where Evans is hanged is chilling, and quite accurate. Slow at first and shot on location at the actual scene of the murders, the film shows a dangerous manipulative killer hiding behind a bland, mild exterior. Because he appeared so mild, Christie was all the more terrifying. Attenborough brings this out expertly and the overall effect is very creepy. This superbly-acted film is British cinema at its' very best. Cup of tea, anyone? 67 of 72 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?

Yes Richard Attenborough: One of the leading figures of British cinema | The Independent Obituaries Richard Attenborough: One of the leading figures of British cinema The acclaimed actor and director was a tireless champion of the British film industry and liberal causes in the last half of the 20th century Monday 25 August 2014 13:03 BST Click to follow The Independent Online Richard Attenborough shooting his film 'Magic' in 1979 GettyImages Lord Richard Attenborough was not only one of the prime figures in British cinema in the last half of the 20th century, acclaimed as both an actor and director, but he was also a tireless champion of the British film industry and liberal causes. It could be said that as an actor he was underrated, partly due to his typecasting as callow or cowardly ratings in his early films, and as a director may be overrated, though he often chose brave projects that required yeoman logistic capabilities.

For the celebrated film Gandhi, for which he won two Oscars, as producer and director, he marshalled over 200,000 extras for the funeral scene, reputed to be the largest number of players ever on screen at the same time. His deep concern for freedom of speech and liberal values were evident in his most personal films, which depict the life of Mahatma Gandhi and Steve Biko, but some assignments saw him over-stretched, such as A Bridge Too Far, which in depicting the chaos of the Arnhem landings proved a chaotic movie, and his misbegotten transcription of the Broadway musical, A Chorus Line.

As an actor, his range was awesome – the irredeemably wicked young gangster of Brighton Rock, the cocky schoolboy of The Guinea Pig, the taxi driver determined to clear his name in Dancing With Crime, the wily soldier of Private’s Progress, the stoic worker defying his mates in The Angry Silence, the chief organiser of The Great Escape, the fraught father in Séance on a Wet Afternoon, the tough sergeant of Guns at Batasi, the hilariously camp antiquarian in The Third Secret, the heart-breaking, tragically lovesick stoker of The Sand Pebbles, the singing and dancing circus master of Dr Dolittle, the sinister killer of 10 Rillington Place and the avuncular Kris Kringle of Miracle on 34th Street are just a handful of 70 film performances.

In Pictures: Richard Attenborough 1923 - 2014 In Pictures: Richard Attenborough 1923 - 2014 1/24 Capital Radio Music Awards Sir Richard Attenborough speaking at the Capital Radio Music Awards at Grosvenor House in 1977 Getty 2/24 Lord Richard and Sir David Attenborough Lord Richard Attenborough, left, and his brother Sir David Attenborough pose outside the 'Richard Attenbororugh' Building at the University of Leicester. They were awarded the title of Distinguished Honorary Fellowships from the University of Leicester Getty 3/24 Richard Attenborough plays marbles Richard Attenborough plays marbles with some of the cast during a break from filming The Guinea Pig at Elstree Studios, April 1948 Getty Images 4/24 The Last Grenade Richard Attenborough on the set of 'The Last Grenade' at Shepperton Studios, Surrey, in 1969.

In the back ground, left, are actors Stanley Baker and Honor Blackman Getty 5/24 Lord Attenborough Lord Attenborough looks on during a statue unveiling ceremony in Nelson Mandela's honour at Parliament Square in 2007 Getty 6/24 Richard Attenborough and Sheila Sim English actors and husband and wife, Richard Attenborough and Sheila Sim Getty Richard Attenborough at his home in Chelsea, London, 1948 Getty 8/24 Richard Attenborough Sir Richard Attenborough and his wife, actress Sheila Sim, arrive at the Odeon Leicester Square for the premiere of Anne of the Thousand Days, 23rd February 1970 Getty Images Richard Attenborough shooting his film 'Magic' in 1979 GettyImages 10/24 Richard Attenborough Richard Attenborough directs US actress and journalist Candice Bergen during the making of Gandhi in 1985 Getty Images 11/24 Richard Attenborough Sir Richard Attenborough at the 2006 South Bank Show Awards which were held at the Savoy in London.

He was presented the award for the Outstanding category by Sir Ian McKellen Getty Lord Richard Attenborough during Unicorn Theatre Re-launch at Unicorn Theatre Getty Lord Richard Attenborough during Unicorn Theatre Re-launch at Unicorn Theatre Getty Getty His marriage in 1945 to Sheila Sim endured until his death, and he was confronted by appalling tragedy when one of his daughters, a grand-daughter and his daughter’s mother-in-law were killed in the Tsunami caused by the Indian Ocean earthquake on Boxing Day 2004. His diverse corporate appointments included Governor of the National Film School, Trustee of the Tate Gallery and Chairman of Chelsea Football Club. In memory of his daughter he founded the Jane Holland Creative Centre for Learning at Waterford Kamhlaba in Swaziland, which promoted his passionate belief in non-racial education. Awarded the CBE in 1967, he was knighted in 1976, and in 1993 he was made a life peer, sitting in the Lords as Baron Attenborough of Richmond upon Thames. Though he was a fervent Labour supporter, his friends included Prince Charles and other establishment figures.

Attenborough was close to Princess Diana and taught her (at her husband’s request) how to make speeches and to feel comfortable dealing with large crowds. He and his wife often had the Princess to lunch, and became confidantes whose discretion she trusted. The son of a college administrator who became principal of University College Leicester and who wrote a standard text on Anglo-Saxon law, he was born Richard Samuel Attenborough in 1923, the oldest of three brothers – the youngest, David Attenborough, is the naturalist and television presenter. Their mother was president of Leicester Little Theatre, and Richard became interested in acting while in his teens. At the age of 17 he won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and while studying there in 1941 he made his stage debut at the Intimate Theatre, Palmers Green, playing the lovesick teenager Richard in Eugene O’ Neill’s Ah, Wilderness. In 1942 he was given his first screen role, as a submarine stoker, who deserts his post in Noël Coward’s stirring tribute to the Navy, In Which We Serve (1942).

“If you blinked, you missed me,” he later said, “but getting to know Noël was the great thing. He was the most influential and supporting figure of my early life.” Attenborough then gave a chilling depiction on stage of the venal Leo Hubbard in Lillian Helman’s The Little Foxes (1942), which opened during a thick London fog and lasted for only three weeks. The following year he was given the lead in a stage version of Graham Greene’s novel Brighton Rock, in which he played the vicious psychopath, Pinkie Brown. Both he and another newcomer, Dulcie Gray, won praise for their contrasting portrayals of evil and good. “Dickie asked me to take my shoes off during auditions because he was very short,” recalled Gray, “but he was very attractive in those days with his large eyes, snub nose and sensual mouth.” Attenborough served in the RAF for the rest of the war, then on demobilisation he married a fellow student he had met at Rada, Sheila Sim.

Journey Together (1945), a propaganda piece made to promote Anglo-American relations, teamed Attenborough with Hollywood veteran Edward G Robinson, and though it fulfilled its purpose entertainingly it helped establish the association of Attenborough’s image with that of nervousness and inexperience. The film version of Brighton Rock (1947) helped break the mould, thought there were elements of the stereotype in his brash and boastful youth who becomes a frightened killer in London Belongs to Me (1948). His baby-face looks helped make him a convincing schoolboy in the Boulting Brothers film The Guinea Pig (1948), a tale inspired by the recently passed law that allowed working class boys to attend public schools. He was a scared rating again, this time on a submarine, in the gripping Morning Departure (1950). The same year he starred with his wife and Yolande Donlan in a hit stage comedy, To Dorothy a Son, as a harassed father-to-be, and he played a similar role on screen in Father’s Doing Fine (1952), the first film for which he received star billing.

In late 1952 he and Sim had no idea that they were becoming part of theatre history when they opened at the Ambassador’s Theatre in a cosy Agatha Christie thriller that was expected to run for a year or two. It was The Mousetrap, which celebrated its 61st birthday last November. Attenborough played Sergeant Trotter for two years, after which he returned to the screen in three hit comedies for the Boulting Brothers, Private’s Progress (1956), Brothers-in-Law (1957) and I’m Alright Jack (1959), which satirised the military, the law and trade unions respectively. His prolific film roles included The Ship That Died of Shame (1955), Dunkirk (1958), The Man Upstairs (1958), Danger Within (1959, and the extremely popular caper movie The League of Gentlemen (1959), which was written by his friend Bryan Forbes.

In 1960 he and Forbes formed a production company, Beaver Films, and for their first film they bravely tackled the subject of strikes, which Attenborough (after Kenneth More turned down the role) playing a worker who refuses to join an unofficial strike and is sent to Coventry by his colleagues. Beaver had its greatest success with Whistle Down the Wind (1961), though Attenborough did not appear in it, nor another Beaver production, The L-Shaped Room (1962). The first major American production in which Attenborough appeared, and one of the biggest hits of his career, was The Great Escape (1963), in which he played the officer who masterminds the meticulously detailed plan for a massive prisoner-of-war break-out. He was one of the few actors to establish a relationship with the moody Steve McQueen. He then starred in the final Beaver production, Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964). His uncompromising performance as the fraught husband of a crazed medium (Kim Stanley) was a role he used to cite as his favourite. Though a failure in its day, the film now has a cult reputation.

Arguably at his peak as an actor, Attenborough was superb as a sadistic sergeant in Guns at Batasi (1964), and as the navigator of an aeroplane that crashes in the Sahara Desert in Flight of the Navigator (1965). McQueen then suggested that Attenborough appear with him in the epic movie The Sand Pebbles (1966) as the stoker on a gunship patrolling the Yangtse River in 1926 who has a doomed love for a Chinese girl who has been sold into prostitution. His immensely moving portrayal won him a Golden Globe Award as best supporting actor. Surprisingly, although he won many awards, including several Baftas, he was never nominated for an acting Oscar. He then surprised audiences with a roistering song-and-dance turn in Dr. Dolittle (1967), his ebullient, music-hall delivery of the song “I’ve Never Seen Anything Like It” providing a rare lively moment in an elephantine movie.

In 1969, already nursing an ambition to make a film on the life of Mahatma Gandhi, he accepted an assignment to direct a film version of Joan Littlewood’s revue-style stage success based around the songs of the First World War, Oh What a Lovely War! The show traced a delicate line between sparkling song-and-dance entertainment and the harsh realities of trench warfare, and was not an easy project to transfer to the screen. Attenborough set most of the show on Brighton Pier, and achieved at least one superb directorial touch – a young man is seduced into fervently enlisting the vision of a glamorous showgirl (Maggie Smith) singing “I’ll Make a Man of You”, then as he mounts the music-hall stage he has a rude awakening as he comes face to face with the coarse, heavily made-up performer. The film’s final shot – an aerial view of masses of graves of those fallen in the war while on the soundtrack a soldier’s chorus sing ironic lyrics to the melody of Jerome Kern’s “They’ll Never Believe Me” – was devastating.

Having almost imperceptively made the transition from leading man to character actor during the 1960s, Attenborough returned to the screen as a quirk detective inspector in a film version of Joe Orton’s play, Loot (1970), and played a psychologist having an affair with his half-sister in A Severed Head (1970). A fierce opponent of capital punishment, he readily accepted the role of serial killer John Christie in 10 Rillington Place (1971), in which he gave a chilling performance equalled by that of John Hurt as the wrongly executed Timothy Evans. Attenborough’s second film as a director was Young Winston (1972), based on Winston Churchill’s book My Early Life. Starring Simon Ward, the film efficiently depicted a young man’s progress through his schooling, his experiences as a journalist in Africa (with a rousing recreation of the Battle of Omdurman in 1898) and his induction into Parliament, but it was given a complex flashback and narration structure, the sort of elaboration that was to mar Attenborough’s later biography of Charlie Chaplin.

He next directed A Bridge Too Far (1977), an account of the Battle of Arnhem in the Second World War, written by Cornelius Ryan, who wrote the D-Day film The Longest Day, which had already been filmed with great success. Attenborough’s film had a similar all-star cast – when Steve McQueen turned down the leading role, Attenborough successfully pursued Robert Redford – and though the pace is slow and the narrative confusing, the film’s battle scenes are awesome and the film did well at the box office. The following year he directed his first Hollywood film, Magic, a thriller in which a ventriloquist is possessed by his dummy – most critics agree that the earlier film, Dead of Night, handled the subject more effectively. Then in 1982 he achieved his long-standing dream of bringing the life story of Gandhi to the screen. His painstaking account of the life of the Indian promoter of protest through non-violence was his greatest directorial triumph, gaining 11 Oscar nominations and winning eight, including those for Ben Kingsley as Best Actor and Attenborough as Best Producer and Best Director.

Another project close to his heart was Cry Freedom, which starred Denzel Washington as the anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko. Reaction to his treatment of the tale was mixed, since in order to make the downbeat story palatable (Biko died in police custody) , he devoted the film’s second half to the journalist Donald Woods, whose fearless revelations about Biko’s treatment put his own life in danger. Woods’ flight from South Africa with his family reminded some critics of The Sound of Music and was thought to diminish the impact of the Biko section. Chaplin (1992) was the biography of another of Attenborough’s heroes, Charlie Chaplin, and he was particularly lauded for the fine performance he elicited from Robert Downey Jr. Shadowlands (1993), based on the romance between the academic and author CS Lewis and the poet Joy Gresham, was another example of his skill with performers. Attenborough had difficulty finding backing for later projects, selling part of his valuable art collection to raise funds, and the Irish love story, Chasing the Ring, was little seen.

He acted in few films later in his career, but had notable success as an eccentric developer in Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993) and its sequel, and as a twinkly Kris Kringle in The Miracle of 34th Street. After a stroke and a fall, Attenborough sold his Richmond home and in 2012 moved with his ailing wife into a rest home. Richard Samuel Attenborough, actor, producer and director: born Cambridge 29h August, 1923; CBE 1967, Kt 1976, cr. 1993 life peer; married 1945 Sheila Sim (one son, one daughter, and one daughter deceased); died London 24 August 2014. 10 Rillington Place Reviews & Ratings - IMDb IMDb 72 out of 74 people found the following review useful: I Saw This Thirty-three Years Ago from Long Island, USA 1 June 2004 I saw this in a theatre here in the United States in 1971, when I was eleven years old.

I'd seen Richard Attenborough as the circus master in DOCTOR DOLITTLE and I wonder if I'd sold my mother on taking me to this one because I knew the name Richard Attenborough. In any case, this movie burned itself into my brain immediately and, for the next three decades I told many of my fellow American film-buffs that there was this British movie no American had ever heard about that was more blood-curdling than PSYCHO. I suspect the obviously limited release of this movie in the United States had something to do with the fact that one of its chief selling-points was that it was based on a murder not well-known to Americans. The Christie murders were famous in Britain, and, in fact, historic because of their effect on the elimination of the UK's death penalty. But the distributors in America had to market this on its qualities as a thriller. Attenborough had yet to make his name a household word here, GHANDI being about ten years in the future and the probable difficulty with accents couldn't have made people who did see it very eager to recommend it. On top of this, the movie is not a thriller but a truly disturbing exploration of evil.

It makes the roughly contemporary FRENZY look like a sitcom. Movies became more realistic in the late sixties and early seventies than they have been before or since. 10 RILLINGTON PLACE may be the most realistic movie about a serial killer ever made. It may not be the scariest, but it's the most memorable. I haven't forgotten it, and I haven't seen it in more than a generation. It is a mournful movie for serious viewing. Was the above review useful to you? 67 out of 72 people found the following review useful: Creepy film, but excellent! from derby, kansas usa 5 February 2002 This British thriller is one of the best films I have ever seen. It tells the story of John Christie, the serial killer whose "career" lasted from the middle 1940's until the early 1950's. The name is taken from the scene of the murders; 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, London.

Chillingly portrayed by the great actor Richard Attenborough , Christie was a little mouse of a man who first lured his victims home on some pretext or other, usually by saying that he could perform some desired medical procedure on them, for example, an abortion, which was illegal at the time. Once there, he put them at ease by offering them a cup of tea, deceived them into breathing gas from the pipe, rendering them unconscious, then strangled them. He disposed of the bodies, at first by burying them in the garden, then putting them under the sink in the water closet, and finally by tearing up and replacing floorboards and papering over cupboards. The primary reasons that Christie was able to do what he did for so long were first of all the war. London was undergoing the blitz, and people had a tendency to disappear during the bombing. Another reason was that he was able to turn the suspicions of the police from him to a not very bright truck driver named Timothy Evans, (played by John Hurt) who was convicted of the death of his baby daughter, and was also suspected in the murder of his wife, but due to English law could only be tried for one or the other of them.

He was hanged in 1950. The scene in the film where Evans is hanged is chilling, and quite accurate. Slow at first and shot on location at the actual scene of the murders, the film shows a dangerous manipulative killer hiding behind a bland, mild exterior. Because he appeared so mild, Christie was all the more terrifying. Attenborough brings this out expertly and the overall effect is very creepy. This superbly-acted film is British cinema at its' very best. Cup of tea, anyone? from Worcester, England 13 July 2000 10 Rillington Place is more than a classic film. It is frequently referred to whenever the call for the death penalty is made in Britain. The notorious miscarriage of justice i.e the hanging of Timothy Evans, an immature half-wit, for the murder of his wife and child when it is almost universally accepted that they perished at the hands of John "Reg" Christie, is one which will always haunt the British legal system.

When Christie was found guilty and hanged as a serial killer of women, the body of Evans was exhumed and reburied in consecrated ground but this did nothing to hide the embarrassment of those who supported the death penalty. The film itself is a dark and brooding masterpiece which depicts life in post-war London perfectly. The grim, dirty, rain-washed Rillington Place in Notting Hill was a seedy side-street which housed the poor but largely respectable families which had survived the blitz. John Christie had moved down from the North to find work in the capital but ill-health and a penchant for petty crime prevented him from being successful. Richard Attenborough plays the downtrodden but curiously arrogant Christie to perfection. His voice almost a whisper as he lauds it over London's underclasses. In fact Christie was not a landlord, as many believe, he was merely a tenant who fancied himself to be a landlord and acted accordingly. He also dreamed of being a doctor, with devastating consequences.

His treatment of the poor, subnormal Evans (John Hurt) and his beautiful but foolish young wife, Beryl, (Judy Geeson) was centred around their desire for an abortion - illegal in the UK until the late 1960s. John Hurt is very good as the hapless Evans although his Welsh accent needed refining. His look of wide eyed horror and disbelief is a sight to behold. Geeson pouts and whinges and looks gorgeous: the kind of wife any man would desire and yet the kind destined to irritate intensely. The key to appreciating 10 Rillington Place is to have some idea of its setting in British history. To wander in clueless will result in disappointment. There is no gore or x-rated content of any kind and its slow pace will infuriate many. Yet, as a snapshot of an England now gone and a reminder of the folly of capital punishment it is a timeless classic worthy of many viewings. Was the above review useful to you? 36 out of 42 people found the following review useful: Not sure if anyone has ever made a better film than this?

from Longmont, Colorado 6 October 2002 The zenith of British film making, 10 RILLINGTON PLACE (the location since re-named) is a true story. John Christie (who last time I was there was still a star exhibit at Madame Tussaud's waxworks museum in London) was the mega-ordinary, almost mousy south east Londoner who besides liking a good cuppa tea...killed people in his dingy little residence. Somewhat of a sexual predator (though this is hinted at, rather than depicted) Christie used his very basic scientific knowledge to offer "comfort" to such as pregnant young girls by way of his own in-house abortion that none actually survived. The case of young and fully dim-witted Timothy Evans (so brilliantly played by John Hurt) who comes to lodge and whose pretty young wife (Geeson) becomes another victim of the serial killer Christie represented the height of British injustice when Christie himself was able to manipulate the facts to point the finger of guilt at Evans himself and who was actually hanged for the murder of his wife and child.

(The later-bestowed pardon would have been of little consequence I feel....the ultimate "too liitle too late") The film's bleak depiction of immediate post-war Britain is just stunning, Attenborough deserved the Oscar for his amazing characterisation of Christie...a monster with a facade no-one thought to question. No clear-thinking and perceptive person could possibly watch this movie and not be affected in some way. The horror Is that there IS no horror, just a veneer of respectability and decency. I cannot offhand, nominate a more powerful or credible piece of film-making. We have this film in our library and watch it on average ever two years - it has never aged or been less impactful! Was the above review useful to you? 33 out of 42 people found the following review useful: Fascinating serial killer portrait from Hamburg, Germany 13 September 2002 This British 1970's drama tells the life of the real London strangler John Reginald Christie, a doctor and landlord who killed several of his female patients in the 1940's and 1950's. Richard Attenborough plays Christie in a rather silent, but very menacing and psychological way.

Director Richard Fleischer is not portraying a serial killer monster like Hannibal Lector, but rather a boring and nice guy who turning to a mentally disturbed and brutal serial killer. The atmosphere in the dirty London suburbs is photographed in a very dark and intense way, as most of the scenes take place in Christie's old back street house. The calm music adds much atmosphere to the movie, and young John Hurt plays the husband of one of the victims. A forgotten genre jewel that is worth being discovered again, as it cannot be compared to many of those stylish current serial killer TV and movie productions. Was the above review useful to you? 29 out of 35 people found the following review useful: Excellent film version of a true crime from Beverley Hills, England 23 June 2005 There's a whole host of films from the great decade that was the seventies that have gone on to not get the praise that they so rightly deserve, and if one were to make a list of those films; 10 Rillington Place would feature in a prominent position. The film follows the true story of serial killer John Christie, who murdered a series of women in the late forties.

His modus operandi is to murder his victims with gas, shortly before having sex with the corpse. Despite this shocking premise, the film always sees fit to focus more on the reality of the situation than the actual murders themselves. Despite not being graphic, this actually makes the film more shocking as we are constantly reminded of the things that go on behind what people allow us to know about ourselves. The murderer in this story is just a normal man. A nice man, in fact. People trust him, and even respect him; yet despite all this, the man is a stone cold killer. The realistic way that the story is approached, combined with the fact that these are real events ensures that 10 Rillington Place is a morbidly fascinating watch. Richard Attenborough takes the lead role and does fantastically well with it. His calm mannerisms and nonthreatening demeanour clash well with the underlying evil of his character and we really can believe that this man is a maniac. The film was made in the United Kingdom, I'm proud to say, and this is obvious throughout. UK films have a certain atmosphere about them, and although I didn't know that this movie was homegrown before watching it; it soon became apparent.

This style bodes well with the theme of the film, as it's downtrodden and makes sure that the film is firmly planted in the land in which the story took place. The idea of an innocent man not only going down, but being killed, for a crime he did not commit is shocking and the cold way that it is presented in this film reflects the fact that it actually happened and also gives it more of a degree of shock. On the whole, 10 Rillington Place is a film that shouldn't be missed by anyone. It's not all that well known, but this is unfair considering the quality of it and I wont hesitate to recommend this movie to people in the future. Was the above review useful to you? 29 out of 36 people found the following review useful: Brilliant and haunting film! 2 April 2001 *** This review may contain spoilers *** This movie conveys graphically the horror of murder and capital punishment. The injustices which a system of capital punishment can bring about comes across in the trial of the backward and gullible Timothy Evans, played beautifully by John Hurt. Evans is tricked by the brighter and devious Mr Christie into believing his wife died accidentally from an abortion.

When the police investigate, Christie is able to turn all the evidence against Evans, a man not intelligent and articulate enough to defend himself. The ineptitude of the police of that day is shown in their readiness to listen to Christie and get an easy conviction against poor Timothy Evans. The film captures, with honesty and realism, the bleakness of post-war London and the loneliness of its less glamorous parts. Attenborough's performance as the psychopathic Christie is first-class. The sheer emptiness and insignificance of Christie as a person and the horrifying actions that stem from a man whose world has shrunken, is put across powerfully. The execution of Evans is shown to be cold blooded and calculated, making it an act morally no better than the terrible murders. Finally, to the film's credit when Christie is arrested we are not shown his hanging, and no fanfares are sounded for his conviction. The whole episode is just one of many shameful chapters in British justice. There are some ongoing and no doubt others are yet to be written. Was the above review useful to you? 19 out of 21 people found the following review useful: A painstaking revelation of the banality of evil...

26 May 2001 *** This review may contain spoilers *** The film is a masterpiece in many ways, not the least in terms of the gripping performances of the leads and the stark atmosphere of shabby genteel poverty and hopelessness conveyed by Christy's depressing flat. Some have criticized the slowness of the film, but the pace only enhances the banal horror of Christy's mind as he manipulates the poor, ignorant, frightened creatures who become his victims. Attenborough plays this middle class murderer with consummate insight. Judy Geeson and John Hurt play off each other brilliantly, she the flighty sexpot with ambition to escape her miserable life, only too ready to believe Christy's pretensions of being a "medical man"; Hurt a dimwit whose only avenue to self-esteem seems to come from lording it over his young pregnant wife...until Christy comes along with his mind-games to dupe the poor sap into becoming vulnerable to a charge of murder. The miscarriage of justice is, of course, appalling, made worse by the ineptitude and indifference of the police. One can never forget the haunting plaintive cry of "Evans" as he proceeds to his fate: "Christy done it!

Christy done it!" Was the above review useful to you? 20 out of 24 people found the following review useful: Unforgettable. Almost Unbearable. *** This review may contain spoilers *** SPOILERS. This is the stuff nightmares are made on. The period detail of the film, shot at the original address, evokes the shabbiness of a post-war London slum with painful accuracy. Everything is right. The narrow staircase, the tiny rooms, the scrubby backyard and clapboard shed where the burial tools are kept. The props too. Christie takes care of his victims by half-gassing them, reassuring them in a soothing voice that he learned how to treat anxiety and discomfort by administering natural gas during his wartime experience as a warden. When his victims are unconscious he strangles them to death while raping the expiring bodies. The first glimpse we get of his instruments of execution are when he treats his first woman, shortly into the film. He opens the medicine cabinet and extracts a cheap hose, a ratty mask, and one or two other items of frighteningly ordinary junk. His career as a serial murderer lasts more than ten years.

His wife, a dim bulb, goes along with everything until she too disappears, as the other bodies have. The photography captures the ambiance perfectly, many shots tinted a sickly yellowish-green. And the performances are memorable. It's probably Attenborough's finest. In make-up, his head appears shiny and bulbous, like a character in a comic book. He's a frightening villain. But he speaks softly and slowly and with sweet reason. His most famous murder involves a young couple and their daughter (Hurt and Judy Geason) who move into a first-floor flat. Hurt, as Evans the Welshman, is not educated or innately bright. He can't read or write. And he's very poor so when Geason appears to be pregnant again and Attenborough offers his services as abortionist, the couple agree relucantly. While Hurt is away at work, Attenborough does his number on Geason, turning away in a gentlemanly fashion while she removes her "things" and lies on the floor, but she begins to fight him as he forces the mask over her face. Throwing a ligature around her neck, he cries, "Beryl!

Don't make me HURT you!", as if in genuine distress. When Hurt returns home, he finds Geason's body under the bedclothes. "It's COLD!" he exclaims when he feels her flesh. Attenborough's explanation that the procedure was dangerous and had failed does nothing to assuage Hurt, who sobs in his Welsh-tinted English, "But she was just young." One of Attenborough's best moments comes later when Hurt begins to wonder if in fact this death was the result of more than just a botched abortion. Attenborough is looking away at the time but then turns very slowly to stare at Hurt through startlingly wide eyes, the eyes you dare not meet in dreams, and replies with a hiss, "Now, don't you get -- huffy -- with me, young man." It isn't until some years later that new tenants investigating the source of an unpleasant odor downstairs and find trussed-up bodies stuffed into the space between the walls. The back yard also gives up its secrets. This bears little resemblance to Fleisher's often enjoyable but almost invariably glossy commercial work. If you want a scary movie, this is it. And not a drop of blood to be seen.

Was the above review useful to you? 17 out of 21 people found the following review useful: thank goodness for natural gas! 1 October 2003 *** This review may contain spoilers *** This film is just so stirring!just so emotionally indescribable! The cast (including the much underrated Judy Geeson) are superb in bringing to the screen, hopeless and utterly doomed characters trying to retain some sort of dignity amongst the poverty and bleakness. The director captured it all and leaves us with a stark warning that evil can lie disguised and unrecognized amongst the mundane and ordinary. As for Richard Attenborough,from this alone he should have stayed working in front of the camera instead of working behind it. Was the above review useful to you? Page 1 of 8: Remembering Richard Attenborough: A legend of British film | The Economist purchase-rights icon RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH, who died yesterday at the age of 90, was a versatile, prolific and extremely well-liked veteran of stage and screen.

To some viewers he will always be the archetypal Father Christmas of "A Miracle on 34th Street" (1994) or the misguided dinosaur-park developer of "Jurassic Park" (1993). Older audiences will remember him as "Big X" in "The Great Escape" (1963) or as Pinkie, a career-launching turn in "Brighton Rock" (1947). He was a director and producer, too, of Oscar-winning "Gandhi" (1982) and many others, and eventually president of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. To top it all, this multi-skilled man was a Labour-party peer and an avid campaigner, in particular against apartheid. An older brother to the renowned naturalist David Attenborough, Richard Attenborough was born in Cambridge in 1923. His parents instilled in their children a sense of duty and loyalty, and took into their home two German-Jewish refugees who lived with the family for two years.

Dickie, as he was sometimes known, secured a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts aged 17, and was spotted by Noël Coward for whom he made his film debut in "In Which We Serve" (1942). He himself served with the Royal Air Force during the second world war, where he used his stage experience to help develop the RAF Film Unit, recording Bomber Command missions. His breakout role came in 1947, as Pinkie, the merciless teenage gangster, in an adaptation of Graham Greene's novel, "Brighton Rock", a part he knew well having played it on stage. For many years Lord Attenborough was cast in similarly self-possessed, even brutal roles—as Roger "Big X" Bartlett, an RAF squadron leader, in "The Great Escape" and John Christie, the serial killer of "10 Rillington Place" (1971). It was all a far cry from the loveable character, both on and off screen, for which he would later became known.

On stage, along with Sheila Sim, his wife of 69 years, he was part of the original cast of a production of Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap" that would become the longest continuously running play in stage history. The couple had a 10% stake in the production, which made them extremely wealthy for a time, though they later sold the rights to help produce "Gandhi". Lord Attenborough had moved behind the camera for the first time in 1969, to direct "Oh What a Lovely War". He was able to round up an impressive cast that included Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Vanessa Redgrave and Maggie Smith. Though this anti-war musical was not popular with audiences or critics, many praised its bravery in attempting something different.

The New Yorker’s legendary reviewer Pauline Kael said: "Though I found the movie lethal, I hate to say so because...it encourages a policy of not taking chance like this again." As a director, the affable Lord Attenborough was always able to put together fantastic casts: "A Bridge Too Far" (1977), for example, starred Anthony Hopkins, Gene Hackman, Robert Redford, Sean Connery and Michael Caine. He was never afraid to do what he thought he was right, from persisting with "Gandhi" for 20 years, to turning down a place in the House of Lords when first asked in 1992, because he did not feel he could do the position justice while still focused on film. Knighted in 1976, he became known for his extensive work as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF. He suffered a stroke in 2008, which confined him to a wheelchair, but true to his nature he set up a care home to help elderly people in the entertainment business, in which he himself lived with Ms Sims until his death. Lord Attenborough will be remembered for his compassion, imagination and, most of all, his humility.

“I have no interest in being remembered as a great creative filmmaker,” he once said. “I want to be remembered as a storyteller.” Photo credit: AFP Richard Attenborough obituary | Film | The Guardian Richard Attenborough obituary Outstanding figure in British cultural life, he was an actor, director and ebullient patron of several charities Richard Attenborough as Pinkie Brown in Brighton Rock, 1947.

Photograph: ABPC/Sportsphoto/Allstar Richard Attenborough obituary Outstanding figure in British cultural life, he was an actor, director and ebullient patron of several charities Sunday 24 August 2014 19.26 EDT First published on Sunday 24 August 2014 19.26 EDT Share on Messenger Close Richard Attenborough , who has died aged 90, had three distinct personas for those who followed his career in the entertainment world: the baby-faced, pint-sized actor, at turns, cocky and cowardly, later rotund in mostly creepy character roles; the film director of epics such as Gandhi, and Chaplin; and Lord "Dickie", ubiquitous, ebullient and lachrymose, presiding over a host of charitable organisations. However, each image merges into one complete picture of a cheerful humanitarian and imperishable idealist who, for over half a century, played an integral part in British cultural life.

In the history of cinema, the image of the actor will probably be the most enduring, though physically Attenborough lacked the requirements of a romantic leading man (ironically, his younger brother, David, the wildlife expert, had the film-star looks). In fact, Attenborough was in front of the camera for over a quarter of a century before his directorial debut, at the age of 46, with Oh! What a Lovely War in 1969. His first screen role was as a callow stoker who deserts his post in Noël Coward's In Which We Serve (1942), told in flashback by survivors while they cling to a life raft after their ship has been sunk off Crete in May 1941. Small as the part was, the 19-year-old Attenborough made an impression as a cockney coward for Coward. A cockney he wasn't, though he played mainly working-class characters throughout his career. Attenborough's father, Frederick, was a Cambridge don, who later became principal of University College Leicester. Richard, born in Cambridge, was exposed to culture early.

His parents and grandparents were all musical, and one of his first memories was hearing The Messiah conducted by Malcolm Sargent in the De Montfort Hall in Leicester. Above all, Richard and his two younger brothers, David and John, were brought up with a sense of social responsibility. Their mother, Mary, was chair of a committee to care for evacuee Basque children during the Spanish civil war, and she marched in protest against the bombing of Guernica. On the outbreak of the second world war, the Attenboroughs took two Jewish girls into their home, where they stayed for eight years. "That particular decision, not merely paying lip service but taking positive, responsible action to help other human beings, made a profound impression on me. It has, I suppose, affected my life and my attitudes ever since," Attenborough wrote. This is clear from most of his choices of subjects as a producer and director. He inherited his energy and non-stop activity from his mother, who died in a car accident, apparently suffering a heart attack as she was returning alone from a committee meeting.

Attenborough was educated in Leicester, at Wyggeston grammar school, and showed his acting skills early on, gaining a scholarship to Rada in 1940. His first part in the West End was Ralph Berger, the younger son of a Bronx Jewish family in Clifford Odets's Awake and Sing. The Times said he played it "with sound understanding", while the Daily Sketch thought he "showed an intensity of feeling and restraint for a youngster who has a big future". A few months before joining the RAF in June 1943, Attenborough achieved his greatest stage success in Brighton Rock, adapted from the Graham Greene novel by Frank Harvey. Attenborough as Pinkie Brown, the vicious young Catholic gangster, according to the New Statesman, "deserves to have won fame in a single night, for his study in abnormal psychology is thoughtful, delicate and powerful." This forceful performance was recreated in the 1947 Boulting Brothers film version, and remains one of Attenborough's most memorable creations. In 1945, while in the RAF Film Unit, he married Sheila Sim, whom he had met at Rada.

The year before, they had both been cast (though her role was cut out in the editing) in the wartime propaganda film Journey Together, directed by John Boulting, which was meant to demonstrate the special relationship between America and Britain. The US was represented by Edward G Robinson, who waived his fee for playing a flying instructor, while Attenborough was a would-be pilot who has to be content with being a navigator, reflecting his own frustration at never having become a pilot during the war. After demob, Attenborough continued in uniform on screen in Powell and Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death (in one shot as an airman) and Peter Ustinov's School for Secrets (both 1946). He was to play several soldiers and sailors into the 1970s. In The Man Within (1947), based on Greene's first novel, one of Attenborough's rare costume dramas, he was an adolescent member of a gang of smugglers, who betrays his leader (Michael Redgrave). He would continue to play teenagers into his late 20s.

Although he had not changed much physically since Pinkie on stage in Brighton Rock four years previously, he brought more maturity to his film performance. However, it was pushing it a bit to accept the 25-year-old Attenborough in the title role of The Guinea Pig (1948), a 15-year-old working-class scholarship boy at a posh public school, particularly as his wife Sheila played the house mistress. This was followed by another well-meaning social reform melodrama, Boys in Brown (1949), in which "bad 'uns" Attenborough and Dirk Bogarde were Borstal boys. In the same year, Attenborough took another neurotic role on stage, a mentally disturbed Jewish GI in Arthur Laurents's Home of the Brave. Then, eight months after the birth of Michael, their first child, Richard and Sheila appeared together in Roger MacDougall's farce To Dorothy a Son, which ran in the West End for over a year from November 1950. Meanwhile, Attenborough reprised his cowardly sailor role of In Which We Serve in the submarine drama, Morning Departure (1950) as Stoker Snipe, who cracks under pressure.

If John Mills represented the stiff-upper lip school, then Attenborough often had a quivering lower lip. "Pull yourself together, Stokes," says Commander Mills, slapping the hysterical Snipe. "Thank you, sir. I needed that." It worked, because Attenborough seldom let the side down again when below decks in Gift Horse (1952) and The Ship That Died of Shame (1955). In 1952, Sheila and Richard (as Detective Sergeant Trotter) led the first cast of a play which was to became a theatrical phenomenon. They stayed two years at the Ambassadors with The Mousetrap, of which its author Agatha Christie prophesied that "we should get a nice little run out of it". The Attenboroughs were still around to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the whodunnit's run. In the mid-1950s, Attenborough reunited with the Boulting brothers in a series of satirical comedies attacking some of Britain's institutions. Attenborough, now having put on more weight, was a louche figure in all of them.

In Private's Progress (1956), on the army, he was a scrounger; in Brothers in Law (1957), on the legal profession, a smarmy barrister; and in I'm All Right Jack (1959), on management and unions, he was Sydney de Vere Cox, a shady munitions manufacturer. In 1960, Attenborough formed Beaver Films with the actor and director Bryan Forbes, and an independent distribution company, Allied Film Makers, with Forbes, Guy Green, Michael Relph, Basil Dearden and Jack Hawkins. His first film as producer was The Angry Silence, an anti-trades union tract, in which Attenborough was a blackleg and yet a hero. Better was the delightfully piquant heist comedy The League of Gentlemen (1960) with a gallery of British ex-army types, including Attenborough in his spiv persona. Also for his own production company was Forbes's Seance On a Wet Afternoon (1964), in which Attenborough was medium Kim Stanley's weak husband.

The 1960s saw him break into Hollywood, with The Great Escape (1963), third-billed, after Steve McQueen and James Garner, as Squadron Leader "Big X" Bartlett, the master escape planner who is later executed. Further US movies were The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) in which he was an inept navigator whose alcoholism has led to a plane, piloted by James Stewart, to crash in the Sahara desert; in The Sand Pebbles (1966), supporting McQueen again, Attenborough was encouraged to go over the top as a crewman hopelessly in love with a Chinese girl bound for prostitution, and as circus man Albert Blossom in Dr Dolittle (1967). These roles were taken on to help finance his long-cherished project, a film on the life of Gandhi. It was the only film he thought he would direct, but when offered Oh! What a Lovely War, he accepted the challenge gladly.

Although the film, with a dazzling all-star cast of British actors, rather softened Joan Littlewood's scabrous stage satire on the first world war, its stylisation and clever seaside-postcard use of the Brighton pavilion and old pier made it Attenborough's most audacious and artistically successful project. The closing scene, a helicopter shot of thousands of white crosses in a military cemetery, as a chorus sings They'll Never Believe Me, is genuinely moving. Attenborough appeared in four features in 1970, mostly antipathetic roles, notably as the serial killer John Christie in 10 Rillington Place. The sight of a chubby, bald Attenborough wearing thick glasses rubbing a corpse and moaning with orgasmic delight is particularly disturbing. Sir Richard – he was knighted in 1976 – with a broad Scots accent, played a British general sent to take over a small kingdom in Satyajit Ray's The Chess Players (1977). He had met the great Bengali film director in India during his long quest to set up Gandhi.

"I count working for Ray as one of the milestones of my career." At the same time, Attenborough followed his directorial debut with two technically competent but illustrated schoolbook epics, Young Winston (1972) and A Bridge Too Far (1977), the latter about the allied defeat at Arnhem. Finally, in a similar mode, after 20 years, with Goldcrest having put up two-thirds of the £20m budget, Attenborough was able to make Gandhi (1982), which had a fine performance by Ben Kingsley in the title role. The film is dedicated to Lord Mountbatten, Pandit Nehru and an unknown Indian called Motilal Kothari, who suggested the subject to Attenborough in the first place in 1962. Nehru's advice to Attenborough was that it would be wrong to deify Gandhi: "He was too great a man for that." The film won eight Oscars – best picture, best actor, best director, best original screenplay, best cinematography, best art direction, best editing, best costume design – the biggest haul ever for a British movie.

In his acceptance speech, Attenborough said: "Gandhi believed if we could but agree, simplistic though it be, that if we do not resort to violence then the route to solving problems would be much different than the one we take." In the 1980s, he was an active and inspirational chairman of Channel 4 and the British Film Institute, as well as taking on a multitude of other duties with professional bodies and charities for film, theatre, drama and education. With A Chorus Line (1985), Attenborough once again took on material that seemed intractably theatrical. But, as much as he tried to make the Broadway musical "cinematic", such as using flashbacks, it defeated him, replacing cynicism with mawkishness. He was more at home with another portentous biopic, Cry Freedom (1987), through which he was able to express his anger with apartheid in South Africa.

The first half, dealing with the friendship between liberal white journalist Donald Woods (Kevin Kline) and anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko (Denzel Washington), up to the murder of Biko while in police custody, is impressive, but the second half, following Woods's escape from South Africa, descends into conventional thriller territory. When Attenborough's protracted attempts to make a film about Thomas Paine, the 18th century humanitarian and republican, fell through, he turned to another of his idols in Chaplin (1992), a sprawling, vacuous homage to the great comic. He continued on the biographical path, covering CS Lewis in Shadowlands (1993), the young Ernest Hemingway in In Love and War (1996) and the North American conservationist Archie Belaney in Grey Owl (1999), demonstrating that Attenborough's heart was definitely in the right place as was his camera, most of the time. He once told the film critic David Robinson that he derived the most pride from a back-handed compliment paid by an American critic.

As Attenborough explained: "He said something like, 'the problem with Attenborough's work is that he is more interested in the content than the execution.' Almost without exception that is true. I am glad to say I am sorry if I'm not more adventurous cinematically. But my concern is always, did the film say what I wanted to express or advocate?" After a gap of 13 years, he returned to the screen as an actor in Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park (1993), as the mad genius who runs the theme park featuring genetically recreated dinosaurs, a role which he was to repeat in the sequel The Lost World (1997). This introduced him to a new generation of filmgoers, as did his twinkly-eyed Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street (1994), a pointless remake of the 1947 movie. In fact, it was not difficult to see something of Santa Claus in Attenborough, who disarmingly admits that the character is "not far from my own in terms of bonhomie". In his mid-80s, Attenborough was still active in film production.

The last one he directed was Closing the Ring, released in December 2007. It is a love story, set in South Carolina and northern Ireland. A dying gunner, who was in a crash involving a US B-17 plane in 1943, gives a ring to a local to return to his American girlfriend. Fifty years on, a man finds the ring and tracks down the girlfriend and the history of this ring. Attenborough was devastated by a triple tragedy that occurred on 26 December 2004 when his eldest daughter Jane, her daughter Lucy, and Jane's mother-in-law, Jane Holland, all perished in the Asian tsunami disaster. In 2008 he suffered a fall at his home in Richmond, south-west London and was rushed to hospital where he went into a coma, but recovered within a few days. Three years later, David said that his brother was confined to a wheelchair, and that it was unlikely he would be making any more films. In early 2012, he joined Sheila in a home for the care of elderly actors in London that they had both supported for many years. Attenborough was awarded a life peerage in 1993.

He is survived by Sheila, his son Michael and daughter Charlotte. • Richard Samuel Attenborough, Lord Attenborough, actor, producer, director, philanthropist, born 29 August 1923; died 24 August 2014 Shirley MacLaine, Christopher Plummer, Ben Kingsley, Michael York and Saeed Jaffrey have offered their tributes to the late actor and director, who died earlier this week Published: 26 Aug 2014 Richard Attenborough: saying goodbye to a lifetime of roles - Telegraph Richard Attenborough: saying goodbye to a lifetime of roles Robbie Collin salutes Richard Attenborough, the actor, director and producer who has died aged 90 By Robbie Collin , Chief Film Critic 12:44AM BST 25 Aug 2014 Follow The death of Richard Attenborough this weekend reminded us, once again, what a strange, time-defying business movie-stardom is: that one man’s death leaves our hearts suddenly aching for scores of others – scoundrels, killers, lovers and guardians – who never existed.

We knew Attenborough as Pinkie Brown, the baby-faced thug with his tie wrenched as tight as a noose in Brighton Rock, and as the coolly collected RAF Squadron Leader Roger Bartlett in The Great Escape, and as the bald, pursed serial killer John Christie in 10 Rillington Place. He was shiny and devious as General Outram in Satyajit Ray’s The Chess Players, an egomaniacal CEO softened by kindliness in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, and Kris Kringle, the elderly man with the real beard and the impossibly thick, red Santa suit, in the 1994 retelling of Miracle on 34th Street. Whichever of Attenborough’s characters you first encountered was largely determined by when you were born – my generation grew up thinking of him first and foremost as John Hammond, the man who made dinosaurs real – but however old you were, you quickly discovered the rest. When he played Pinkie in 1947, he was 24 years old, with a brow and cheekbones that seemed custom-made for slicing light and shadow.

His face was as built for warmth as it was for villainy, which made him perfect for Jurassic Park: who else could have shown us the hubris of a man bent on playing God, while twinkling with genuine, grandfatherly affection for both the monsters he created and their potential victims? Oh yes, and he directed, too: war films and peace films, virtually in alternation. The most peaceful of them all, Gandhi, brought him two Oscars in 1983, for Best Director and Best Picture. His first film as director, Oh! What a Lovely War, released in 1969, when Attenborough was 46, was a musical satire whose closing shot, a slow pan out across a hillside covered in soldiers’ graves, would be later echoed by Spielberg, a long-time admirer of Attenborough’s, in Saving Private Ryan. In fact, the admiration ran both ways: when Attenborough won his Oscars for Gandhi he was surprised and disappointed to have deprived Spielberg of the honours, whose own film, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, had also been nominated in the Best Picture and Best Director categories.

Related Articles Richard Attenborough dies, aged 90 24 Aug 2014 “Without the initial premise of Mohandas K Gandhi, the film would be nothing,” he later said in an interview. “Therefore it’s a piece of narration rather than a piece of cinema as such. E.T. depended absolutely on the concept of cinema.” Attenborough was, of course, selling himself short. Two more biopics would prove he understood cinema’s odd and myriad powers: firstly as a maker and remaker of images in Chaplin, in which Robert Downey Jr played the elderly comic legend looking back on his own flight to America from London and grinding poverty, and secondly as a conduit for honest emotion in Shadowlands, about the love affair between the writer CS Lewis and the poet Joy Gresham. Lewis was played by Anthony Hopkins, who 15 years earlier had starred in Attenborough’s odd-film-out – a weird psychological chiller that’s ripe for rediscovery. In Magic (1978), Hopkins was a troubled ventriloquist who finds his id pouring out through an apparently homicidal dummy, Fats.

Magic hardly sits neatly alongside Gandhi and Chaplin, but it’s shot through with the same unease and malice as Pinkie Brown in Brighton Rock – the film presents us with another baby-face with turmoil behind it. Richard Attenborough was a treasure of the British film industry, but he became one partly because of his readiness to be an agitator and an unsettler when necessary. As we remember him, let’s not forget it.

Question: Which British serial killer was played by Richard Attenborough in a 1971 movie?
Answer: John Christie